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January 22, 2020

WOOF locker: Unmasking the browser locker behind a stealthy tech support scam operation

In the early days, practically all tech support scammers would get their own leads by doing some amateur SEO poisoning and keyword stuffing on YouTube and other social media sites. They’d then leverage their boiler room to answer incoming calls from victims. Today, these practices continue, but we are seeing more advanced operations with a clear separation between lead generation and … [Read more...]

Filed Under: 404Browlock, 404error, browlock, browlocks, Browser guard, browser locker, chrome, Edge, firefox, malvertising, malvertising campaigns, Microsoft, scams, Social engineering, steganography, tech support, tech support scams, Threat analysis, TSS, WOOF
June 25, 2019

Recipe for success: tech support scammers zero in via paid search

Tech support scammers are known for engaging in a game of whack-a-mole with defenders. Case in point, last month there were reports that crooks had invaded Microsoft Azure Cloud Services to host fake warning pages, also known as browser lockers. In this blog, we take a look at one of the top campaigns that is responsible for driving traffic to those Azure-hosted scareware pages. We discovered … [Read more...]

Filed Under: browlocks, browser locker, browser lockers, malvertising, scammers, scams, tech support scam, tech support scammers, tech support scams
September 13, 2018

Partnerstroka: Large tech support scam operation features latest browser locker

Tech support scams continue to be one of the top consumer threats in 2018, despite actions from security vendors and law enforcement. Scammers are constantly looking for new ways to reel in more victims, going beyond cold calls impersonating Microsoft to rogue tech support ads using the good name of legitimate brands, and of course, malicious pop-ups. We have been monitoring a particular tech … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Blogger redirects, browlock, browlocks, browser locker, browser lockers, cybercrime, Decoy sites, GoDaddy, HTTP authentication, Indicators of compromise, IOC, IOCs, malicious pop-ups, malvertising, Malwarebytes Browser Extension, Malwarebytes Browser Extensions, Partnerstroka, rogue tech support ads, Social engineering, stroka, tech support, tech support scams, TSS